Iterations

The other day, a friend of mine sent me a text message asking why I haven’t set up a Patreon for my podcasts. “Why would I do that?” I asked. “Asks the person who has wondered how he can get paid for the podcast he puts out,” he replied. There were a few more exchanges after this, but you get the idea. This was being asked by one of my closest friends and I know that it was absolutely from a space...

A number of you have asked why I am selling what review after review calls the best APS-C camera on the market today to buy a two-year old Micro 4/3 camera that I’ve already bought and returned once before? Well, it’s complicated, but if you’ll give me a little bit of rope, I’ll promise to try and wrap it up without hanging myself. What camera should I buy? It’s a question I get asked a lot. And I...

“The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires.” – William Arthur Ward I have been drawing as far back as I can remember. My mom used to tell me that I could draw before I could talk. I’ve spoken on previous Iterations about my childhood love of art supply stores, which is still kind of true. All I ever wanted to be as a kid wa...

Over the weekend, I took a workshop in encaustic painting. For those of you unfamiliar with the term, it’s basically painting with hot wax and it’s a process that’s been around for literally thousands of years. The are records of the Greeks using it as far back as the 5th century BC. The process involves heating beeswax with damar resin crystals which forms what’s known as “medium.” From there, yo...

Earlier this week I put up an image on Instagram with the caption “Time for a reboot.” It’s basically a “glitchy” version of my signature logo that I use as my avatar on Instagram and Twitter. I posted it because I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about how I use—or in some cases misuse—social media and I’ve come to the conclusion that now is a great time to redefine what I want to get from...

Last week, we were in New Hampshire celebrating Christmas with family. Now, I’ve got to tell you that I love handmade gifts and this year my eleven-year-old niece Anya made me a gift that I absolutely love. It’s a canvas board which, for those of you who may bot know is basically a piece of mat board wrapped in canvas. This particular piece measures 3×9 inches and on it she painted the phrase “My...

I’ve been sitting on something for a while because I didn’t know how or even if I should share it. But, I think it’s important and while I won’t share it in its entirety, I would like to share a portion of it because as I said, I think it’s important — both for me to say and maybe for you to hear. It all centers around a conversation I had with Adrianne that was one of if not the most difficult co...

Iteration 37 was called The Myth of the Perfect Thing and in it I chronicled part of my years long search for a new camera to replace or at least complement my Fuji X-Pro1, ultimately leading me to the Olympus EM1 Mkii. A few days after I recorded that episode I actually bought an X-T3 and since I started posting images taken with it, I’ve gotten some emails and messages asking what happened and w...

I woke up the other morning thinking about The Beatles, specifically the dramatic changes their work went through over the course of their career. From what I know of them, they began doing covers of other people’s material – mostly early American rock ‘n’ roll from artists like Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Buddy Holly, and Elvis Presley. Learning the songs of their heroes allowed them to use that...

There’s a scene in the new remake of A Star is Born that’s been rattling around in my head since I saw the film. It’s the scene where Bradley Cooper’s character Jackson is talking to Lady Gaga’s character Ally about self-expression and finding her voice. Jackson says, “Look, talent comes everywhere, but having something to say and a way to say it so that people listen to it, that’s a whole other b...

When I was a kid, there was a big department store chain called The May Company. It was sort of like a Macy’s and the one nearest our house was at an outdoor mall called the Eastland Center. In the lower level of The May Company, they had an art supply section and whenever I would go there with my mom, she would let me stay there in the art supply section while she went shopping. I still remember...

At the end of 1999, I bought my first new car: a 2000 Chevy Blazer Sport in black, with a dark grey interior. I had never bought a new car before and the purchase process took months. Literally. I think I test drove every car available under $30,000 — multiple times. It got to the point where sales people at several local dealerships knew me by name. As it turned out, the local Chevy dealer was ow...

Yesterday was our first day back from a 9-day working vacation in France and Germany and I’ve got to tell you, I still haven’t fully readjusted to East Coast time, but I wanted to talk a little about the trip while it was still fresh in my mind. I spent the bulk of the day yesterday taking a first pass at photos and making notes about the some of the experiences we had and how I would like to see...

I had a friend in college—let’s call him Michael—who was one of the most interesting people I had ever met up to that point in my life. He was the first person I’d met who had…almost an “aura” about him, for lack of a better word, along with several unique qualities that just made him fascinating to be around. He wasn’t what you would call a “goth” per se, but his appearance was striking. His hair...

Next month, we will have been in this house for two years and it’s taken me all of that time to finally get around to beginning the build out of the two basement spaces that will ultimately become my studios — one for podcasting and digital media and the other for painting and printing. The previous owners of the house were both makers—he was a woodworker and an engineer and she was a painter. Tog...

In this episode, I want to talk about prints. You remember prints, right–little pieces of paper with pictures on them? Your parents probably had albums or maybe boxes of them that you would flip through on holidays or birthdays or the night before you went off to college. The act of printing photographs has changed dramatically since I bought my first camera in 1982—necessarily so. With film camer...

A couple weeks ago, I spoke to a friend from college who I hadn’t spoken to in…well, longer than it should have been. It’s something I’m really trying to work on, but as you probably know, sometimes life gets in the way. Anyway, during the course of our conversation catching up on what was happening in each other’s lives, he told me that my design professor and the person who was really the corner...

Earlier this week, we recorded the last episode of On Taking Pictures after more than six years of weekly episodes. While the show was ostensibly about photography, the legacy of the show is 325 episodes—about 600 hours, give or take—of conversations that ranged from why we make art to whether digital is better than film. I think we spent more time asking questions than answering them, and for me,...

Tomorrow would have been my mom’s 74th birthday and while not a day goes by that I don’t miss her, I am grateful for the life I was allowed to share with her. She was generous, compassionate, and the most unconditionally loving person I have ever met. She always encouraged me to embrace the quirky, creative side of myself and insisted that following my passion meant not holding back and always giv...

E3 was last week and for those of you who may not know what that is, it’s the Electronic Entertainment Expo and if you’re a gamer, it’s like Mecca. Every year, game studios and indie developers descend on the LA convention center for the chance to show the games the’ve been working on, sometimes for years. E3 is full sensory overload—a barrage of sight and sound from the minute you walk through th...

Recently, I was talking to a friend of mine about Process Driven and he asked me why I did the show. Not from the standpoint of having the conversations, but rather why release them into the world. “What do you get out of it?” he asked. As I thought about it for a bit, I really couldn’t come up with an answer—no one that was coherent anyway. I’ve been thinking about it ever since—a lot—and I think...

Lately I’ve been seeing, or maybe just noticing, the word “iconic” as a means for makers to describe their own work—“my name is so and so and I make iconic portraits of whatever…,” and I’ve got to tell you, I’m having a hard time with how it’s being used. The Atlantic posted a terrific article on how the “Nifty 50” became the goto lens for many photographers. If you’ve ever thought about making yo...

As much as I love artists like Rauschenberg, deKooning and even Boucher, the first artist I knew by name was Frank Frazetta . He painted worlds I had never seen before, filled with warriors being pulled by a team of polar bears, red eyed demons on horseback and beautiful scantily clad maidens. I poured over his books, meticulously copying my favorite characters. While it was great drawing practice...

Earlier today, Bill and I recorded episode 312 of On Taking Pictures and while I wouldn’t say it was our best show—it was a good show. I think every show is a good show for one reason or another. It was one of the more significant shows because of the number—episode 312. If you do the math, 312 marks the end of six years of doing On Taking Pictures every week and while I’ve talked in the past abou...